One of my regular readers got in touch and said I should be blogging more. "There must be lots to talk about in your new neighbourhood!" she said. There isn't. I'm not doing anything so I'm not bumping into things that are noteworthy. Nonetheless, given that I have so few readers I had to try and think of something.
Bananas. That was something that I thought this morning over breakfast as I tried to eat a particularly tasteless but yucky one. Bananas here are different. The Spanish word banana usually refers to a small fruit that looks like the typical "British" banana except that it's smaller. They are quite different though, a completely different texture and taste and typically they come from the Canary Islands. Plátanos are more like the typical banana that we can buy in any greengrocer or supermarket in the UK. The quality here though is very variable. Often they are very green, tough to eat and very woody in texture. Alternatively the skin is a dark yellow and the fruit is mushy. I seem to remember that there was some sort of scandal in the UK or at least unease because bananas from the Caribbean were being sprayed with something, maybe ethylene, whilst they were in transit. Perhaps that's the taste I'm used to. Anyway there's an entry. Beware of bananas in Spain.
I also thought that I should get out a bit. At the moment I go to work. I talk to my colleagues a little and I talk to my students a lot but then I come home and my only interaction is with the computer. I didn't work yesterday for instance. My conversations during the day included asking for four plastic bags, asking for a cinema ticket, asking for both alcohol free and alcohol rich beers, whisky and saying hello to one of the neighbours. No conversation was longer than maybe fifteen words. Vegetating alone.
Now there's a fiesta in La Unión at the moment. Stalls in the streets, bands and comedians on stage, races between waiters carrying loaded trays - all the fun of the fair. Last night, according to the programme, there was a giant sandwich free to anyone who cared to queue for a slice. I decided to go. I loaded up my camera bag and walked the fifteen minutes from my new flat to the town centre. True enough there was the giant sandwich. I took a few snaps, wandered around a bit, thought the sandwich looked a bit unappetising, listened to the 80s band rehearse a few numbers, wandered around a bit more and headed for home. Being alone in the midst of the jollity was a bit depressing to be honest.
On my way home I worked up a thirst. I thought I'd stop for a beer. Bars in Spain tend to be a bit uncomfy. There must be exceptions but I don't know of a Spanish bar that has sofas or armchairs. Chairs are pretty basic and anyway I prefer to sit at the bar. Functional rather than stylish. One of those horsebrass and armchair pubs would be very welcome. The bar was called the Manhattan and from the outside it looked modern - a skyline of skyscrapers etched into the barfront glass. Inside it was a tiled floor, stainless steel shelving, Spain versus Belarus on the telly and the shelves behind the bar a jumble of the detritus of years of use. The welcome was fine. They were obviously intrigued to have a solitary foreigner in a neighbourhood bar at eleven thirty and there was a big grin to accompany my simple orders. The men at the bar, entertaining themselves with listening to music on their mobiles or leafing through the morning's local paper, weren't exactly having the time of their lives but I was aware that they were aware of my presence.
I tired of beer. I asked for a whisky. Generally, another of those sometimes untrue generalisations, Spaniards do not drink neat whisky. They add coke or some other barbarism. The few who choose not to mix it with something sugary nearly always have ice. I asked for mine without ice. This is always good fun. Normally for spirits the bartenders pop a couple of ice cubes in the glass and that helps them decide when they have poured a sufficient quantity of booze into the glass. The woman behind the bar poured whisky for the usual amount of time. She looked the the centimetre of whisky in my glass. Without ice it looked like a mean measure to her so she poured another centimetre or so on top. This happens a lot. Those 25ml UK measures make Spaniards laugh. I prefer Spanish measures!
That's it. I can think of no more.
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